WIRU (STRONG SPIRIT)

“With every painting, Julie Dowling gives ownership to our communities with every story told within them. She has focused on healing and acknowledgement of how truly resilient and strong our people are…” Julie’s sister, Carol Dowling 2018Nationally renowned Badimaya artist Julie Dowling presents Wiru, an exhibition of new works at the Midland Junction Arts Centre documenting and highlighting the revival of First Nations languages within local and global contexts.For Wiru (Spirit) Dowling’s suite of miniature portraits represents a community actively decolonising through documenting, learning and speaking their language, Badimaya on Country in the Mid-West of WA. Referring to the importance of preserving First Nation languages throughout the world, within each work of this series of paintings, language is represented as a vessel for relationships to Country, full of knowledge, culture and historical significance.“The use of our faces in this exhibition is the idea of having the presence of First Nations people in any room. It is emblematic of us as human beings.” Carol Dowling 2018Classified as an endangered language, and with only a single fluent speaker, the Badimaya people are engaging proactively to learn and preserve their language. This exhibition takes the form of a visual thesis for the importance of cultural preservation on a personal scale.The larger works in Wiru illustrate Dowling’s exploration of Midland’s history and pays homage to the significance of this area to the Wajuk Noongar people. Midland has the highest percentage of Aboriginal people living in the Perth Metro area. To celebrate this strong relationship to land, her paintings use Badimaya and Noongar words in the title and subject matter.Working in a social realist style, Dowling draws on diverse art traditions including European portraiture, Christian icons, mural painting, dotting and Indigenous Australian iconography. Dowling has established an ethnographic practice recording deep-seated injustices in the Indigenous community. Her paintings have a strong political edge, subverting traditional power relations between the observer and the observed, the colonizer and the colonized."

Description:This is a painting about the moment when our youth learn what the First Nation land rights flag represents to their lives.The first time I put a Land Rights shirt on the flag to me meant all the history of First Nations protest for real land rights on the streets.My 1st land rights rally was when I was 19.When you’re able to express yourself as First Nation woman on the streets with family and friends you are part of your community speaking as one voice.I painted this to represent all our young women in the resistance fight for our sacred lands to be vacated with no strings attached.Today, the flag is under constant ‘government’ propaganda threat by those seeking to use it within colonial and state institutions that actively organize against our land rights.Sometimes having the flag in these places becomes a tool for our oppression because we get fooled that it’s some kind of in-road to changing their system from within but its a lie.All the misuse & tokenism of our land rights flag in their buildings and on their documents becomes too Milgu (Sharp) for them to handle when we justify its true origin & meaning with every step we take in protest of them all.The land rights flag is one of the many true symbols of our resistance to their colonial invasion.Symbols:In the pictographs around the girl are the symbol for the many rivers found around Wadjuk Noongar country where this exhibition is shown.

Description:This painting reflects on the many domestic slaves that worked in white homes build on Wajuk Noongar country now known as Guildford and Midland.The woman in the painting is a trophy servant. Possibly a close slave to a wealthy wife or young woman. Now that she is sick she becomes less of a trophy and more as a burden so the woman stands in between two Kurrajong trees with their medicine pods dropping close to her to try heal her with their medicine.

Description:When I was growing up the word Bimba had a mythic quality about it because it was a Badimaya word for the sweet sap that can only be found, or so I believed at the time, only from our Badimaya country far away to the north.This is a fantasy dream-like image as if found in a 1940's advertisement during WW2 with the tree symbolically growing to the left of the painting sheltering a couple in love.

Description:This is a painting about how some white Gallery owners, artist agents and collectors are being racist and unethically to First Nation artists.First Nations artists work is bought for very little then ‘flipped’ in the art market at art auctions or in private secret sales for large amounts of money of whichFirst Nation only get 13% at resale if they’re lucky enough to know about being registered for it.I painted a young artist being shadowed by racists in the art market with her 1st painting which shows weitch(emu) and jardi (goanna).

Description:This is a painting about the last fluent speakers of First Nation languages.In the pictographs around the elder are trees with the spirits of those she used to talk with in her language going to their ancestor spirits just as they reach for her also above her head.A living language has its own understanding of life with unique insight into the universe.When a language disappears all humanity is diminished.

Description:This painting reflects on the pressures and influences of major cities on First Nations children today.Many First Nation parents have learned to take their children to experience their land and language as much as possible to help their children not to assimilated away from culture.A mother holds her son who is posing with hip-hop hand gesture meaning 'peace'.

I wanted to paint about the two First Nation men folk who took it upon themselves to keep a car of the train free from trouble every night when I left from teaching at 7pm from Midland TAFE. This was before there were any train security guards.Midland train station sits cold behind the figure showing the yellow glow of the fluorescent lights and the grey concrete of the train platform.Wadinya (Now) represents the anxiety and fear that First Nation people face everyday in violent situations that happens due to racist stereotypes. First Nation people either risk death in custody or on the street from on duty or plain clothed police officers or from train security guards.

Works on PaperMay 201820.5x20.5cmAcrylic, Pastel and Plastic on Arches Paper

Works on PaperMay 201817.5x22.5cmAcrylic and Pastel on Arches Paper

Works on PaperMay 201822x27cmAcrylic and Pastel on Arches Paper

Small WorksApril 201817x22cmAcrylic on canvas.

"I wanted to show faces of First Nations people within this portrait tradition within a tradition of a spoken Badimaya word with English translation acting as a bridge into a common humanity.I wanted to translate the emotion of each word to be understood and remembered."

Small WorksMay 201812x17cmAcrylic, Mica Gold and Plastic on canvas.

"These series of portraits also follow a European tradition of miniature portraiture which has been used to show intimate likenesses which are able to be carried around by whomever could afford them.Miniatures were painted or commissioned by artists to be exchanged between those they love.Lovers, family, biblical subjects and those they admired in general were the common subject."

Small WorksApril 201811x15cmAcrylic, Mica Gold and Plastic on canvas.

"I am not a fluent speaker of my language. I was raised with Creole Noongar and English-Irish language but only words of Badimaya.My grandmother was stolen from her family and culture when she was 11 years old by the man who fathered her. As a result of being stolen by him she assumed a common mask of assimilation to hide behind as many did at the time while code-switching to speak with other First Nation people if they came in contact with them in Perth."

Small WorksApril 201815x20cmAcrylic on canvas.

Description:I used miniatures to capture the words I'm learning in the Badimaya dictionary.The dictionary was written by our last fluent speaker of Badimaya is Ollie George who is in his 90's.Ollie was also assisted by many other elders who could translate specific words.

" This series is the first I made reflecting on the power of language on the community I live in and the threats we face from the outside influences to keep our land based languages.Each language is an insight into the universe.Wiru means Strong Spirit...